Advance Reality

Google Goggles – It Had to Happen Sometime

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by Alex in Brain Enhancement, Global Brain

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was making fun of a Google duo trying to explain a new service with video. I won’t spend too much time ripping today’s new one, because I’m too in shock both at the amazingness of this product (and name), and at how someone could possibly sound more like Arnold Swarzenegger than Arnold Swarzenegger.

These buddy cop movie stars-to-be are announcing Google Goggles, Google’s first stab at Augmented Reality (although yes, nitpickers, I suppose the Android GPS navigation system is also a form of AR). Goggles is an app for Android phones that enables quick photo search–you open the app, take a picture of an object, and are given a results page for the object. Like Layar, an Android/iPhone app, it can work without taking pictures, using GPS and compass information to tell you what buildings you are looking at to provide business information from the web. 

What will be interesting to see is the evolution of Google Goggles’s image recognition ability. Imagine it giving you the names of plants and animals you encounter on hikes, or the name of gross random vegetables you find on your plate at the ethnic restaurant your mom forced you to go to, even though you did all your homework and have been nice to Grandma even after she started smelling like Tiger Woods’ crash day Hanes. I suspect that with apps like Goggles, Android phones will start to look more and more like the device in the jaw dropping Sixth Sense TED presentation.

Since I don’t have a Droid yet (feel free to buy me one from my cam site wish list), I’m going to camp out tomorrow at my local early adopter geek hangout: the Whole Foods deli counter. I can’t wait to giggle at gaggles of Google Goggles goons gobbling gabagool.